The Strange Meal
by The-Stupid-Face
Summary: After weeks of struggling to find food, Denmark finds some fresh meat. It's not the usual type though. (First person of Denmark's pov, contains description of gore.)


We were starving to death and needed medical attention. We had been on a hunt for weeks and had gotten lost, slowly running out of any supplies. Norway and Sweden had a plan: I looked for food, Norway searched for wood, and Sweden would try and find a place to stay for the night that wouldn't result to us all being eaten alive. He managed to find a small cave that could to fit us all, if we squeezed in. The two headed off to find wood and stones to create a fire whilst I searched for the rare thing in the wintery woodland…food.

We hadn't been able to find any animals to kill within those woods, none of us knew why. Maybe someone else was here, taking all the animals and leaving us with nothing or a fierce monstrous bear was hoarding all of the animals in his cave; whatever we thought, it still didn't change the fact that we were starving and there was no food around, only a few rare plants. As I walked by the stream, I heard footsteps to the left side of it. Gripping onto the handle of my axe, I headed to the source. As I walked closer, I heard the footsteps stop and a smash into the cold snow. I had guessed it was something big by the sound and I grinned; it might have been food for once, big enough to last us a while…

As I stood by the source of the noise, I realised what was in front of me. A human, a dying human. She was thin and had wounds all over her body; looking up with her helpless blue eyes, she began to speak a whole different language from mine. I knelt down to her level as she crawled to me; she smiled as though there was hope for her. I wrapped my arms around the frail woman, covering her freezing body with my fur cape and giving her the last warmth she'd feel. I took my knife whilst she seemed to have been happy to find me and kept hold of her as I stabbed the knife into her stomach. I gave her peace; she needn't have worry about starving to death like I had to.

A thought began to run through my mind: I had been searching for food for days by now. Here was a human who basically fell into my trap, her blood staining the white, crisp snow. Yet I was about to just leave her body for whatever was out here? I shook my head and told myself I was stupid, I was fighting against myself as to whether or not I would take the body and treat her like food. If I left her body, there was half a chance of animals appearing, but Norway, Sweden and I could have starved by then. Yet if I took her and used her for a meal for us, then she'd be saving our lives and wouldn't have died in vain.

I decided that the second option was more of a benefit to us all. Picking up her body, I walked back to our stay. I had noticed that she had a lot of potential meat on her thighs even though the rest of her was thinner. None of the wounds were infected and her skin seemed soft, possibly easy to take off quickly. When I arrived, I realized that maybe Norway and Sweden wouldn't so open-minded about eating a human as I was. We were all starving at the same rate, but they always seemed to be the logical ones, sane enough not to eat a human. In contrast, I didn't seem to care at this point. Now, anything was food to me; I either took it or left it.

I arrived at our stay where nobody seemed to be about, only the corpse and myself. I walked away from the cave and placed her carefully on the ground. Even though she was dead and I was going to cook her, I felt like I had to pay respects to her for dying for us. I prayed to my gods, thanking them for a chance to eat again. Afterwards, I began to prepare her for cooking.

I had taken off her clothes until she was completely naked; it was a shame it had to be her, she seemed beautiful… I started skinning her from the stomach, much like how we usually skinned a squirrel or fox. To be honest, I didn't know how to skin the body; it was more Norway's job to prepare the food. Once I had finished with the attempt to skin the body, it was time for the messier part: gutting her organs out as quickly as possible and placing them in the snow.

Once I had prepared the body, it no longer looked like a human. Hacking the meat and bones into pieces, I placed them all in a bowl of snow with some of her heart and kidney. I ran over to the remainders of the body and hid them under the snow; now it only looked like I had a lot of animals instead of one human. I waited for the two to arrive back with wood and stone, my legs twitching from the cold and nervousness. I had begun to think that it was all a bad idea, killing the woman in the first place. What if they found out and thought of me as a monster when I was only trying to save their lives?

What felt like hours passed by when they finally arrived, they were laughing and had a deep conversation. When they saw me, they stopped, going completely silent. They were always closer to each other than to me; I guess they had always seen me as the strange one of the three. Norway probably guessed that I didn't find any food until he saw the bowl full of meat. They both praised me selfishly; they weren't going to starve now, so they had begun to like me. We lit a fire and cooked the meat until it turned into a juicy stew.

Norway had asked where the fur was. He was most likely planning to make a piece of clothing with it. I became hesitant and told him that I couldn't remember. We all began to eat our strange meal when Sweden asked what the meat was, probably noticing the difference in taste and texture. I kept silent for a while, trying to think of animal that would probably be in the woods. I said fox only to be told how it didn't taste or smell like fox. I simply gave the reply that it was a new breed.

Things had begun to add up in their minds; I would have saved the fur any other day and the fact that I was showing signs of lying made them even more suspicious. They demanded answers as to what my new found meat was. I stared at the two; I could see the confusion and anger in both their eyes. Neither of the two liked being lied to, though they should have been used to it since I lied to them all the time.

I confessed that it was human and begun to explain how she was dying before I saw her and how I gave her peace. Norway and Sweden froze in front of me, their wide eyes looking at me then to the bowls. Sweden was the first to react, dropping his bowl and running away to throw up the food he had already eaten. Norway stared me before shaking his head, telling me I was a monster. He threw his bowl across the snow and kicked it. I shouted at him about how it was a waste of food, but he seemed green in the face when I said that. I picked myself up and walked closer Norway to clear up all the bowls, but he shoved me to the freezing snow and began to scream at me. He shouted various insults from 'you're a sick bastard and a revolting monster' to saying that I shouldn't live after what I had done. He ran away from the stay, probably to check on Sweden.

I lied in the snow, the cold wrapping the whole of my body. I stared into the open night sky. The only sounds in the whole of the forest were Sweden and Norway's disgust for me, throwing up the meal I caught for them and talking about how I was a vile monster. They were talking about running away from me and leaving me to starve, but I didn't really care by then. I felt like my mind had already gone into a world where it was okay to do the things that I did. I think they overreacted.

**((AN: Hey everyone, I hope this piece is any good. It's mainly based off a very strange dream I had ages ago that refused to go away from my mind. So I decided maybe I should write it. I give great thanks to Tanglepelt for beta-reading it :D Happy Halloween!))**


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